Long blackouts ease in eastern Venezuela after weeks of crisis

José Velasco, a 23-year-old engineer, experienced a string of discomforts in the last 13 days due to the critical lack of electricity on the Venezuelan island of Margarita: several foodstuffs rotted; he almost never had piped water in his home; and the people – and he – were walking in the street “bathed in sweat” due to the lack of air conditioning in that humid and hot town.

“I threw away ham, cheese and tomato paste that was damaged. I had to use water with a glass to brush my teeth. The hardest thing has been the heat,” with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, he told the Voice of America about the prolonged blackouts of the last two weeks in the east of the country.

Margarita, nicknamed “the Jewel of the Caribbean” for its beaches, attractive to thousands of tourists, even from distant nations, such as Russia and Poland, is among the dozens of towns in Venezuela that have been left without electricity for most of their days since the 11 of this month.

That day, The Muscar Gas Complex exploded in Monagas, whose gas feeds the thermoelectric systems in part of the east of the country, such as Nueva Esparta, a state of 3 islands, Margarita among them, with an estimated population of 350,000 inhabitants.

According to the government of socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, the incident was part of a “terrorist attack” planned by the Venezuelan opposition, expressly accusing the leader María Corina Machado of wanting to “destabilize” society and the economy.

The electricity service presented “considerable effects,” admitted the National Electric Corporation (Corpoelec) in a statement, five days after the explosion.

Minister Jorge Eliéser Márquez, a military man previously in charge of President Maduro’s office and former director of the National Telecommunications Commission, promised a week ago that the electrical service would be normalized soon.

However, it was only this Sunday, a week later, when most of Nueva Esparta enjoyed uninterrupted light.

According to official media, the government activated 6 of 8 units of the Nueva Esparta thermoelectric plants, benefiting 80% of the population.

The previous days there was never an official rationing schedule that would allow us to know how many hours the power outages would last each day, commercial unions denounced through spokespersons and statements and citizens on social networks.

Governor Morel Rodríguez, of an opposition tendency, called on the Venezuelan government to “tell the truth” about the situation and said he had witnessed that tourist towns, such as Porlamar, were completely dark until last week.

Hotels, shopping centers and restaurants in cities like Margarita relied on electricity generators that operate on fuels, such as diesel and gasoline.

The losses in the commercial sector have been “enormous,” according to Venezuela’s main business union, Fedecámaras.

“The companies are inoperative, they cannot bill or work. “People are worn out,” Gabriel Briceño, vice president of Fedecámaras Nueva Esparta, said in an interview last week.

“I don’t want this life for myself.”

Valeria, an employee of a store in a shopping center in Margarita, who did not want to use her real name, asked her bosses for permission to be absent due to a nervous breakdown suffered by the prolonged blackouts.

“It’s too hot, I don’t want this life for myself,” she told them in a voice notification, through tears. “This situation has always overwhelmed me, no one deserves this fatigue, this heat,” he confided, criticizing the 14 years of electricity crisis in Venezuela.

Glenda, another anonymous resident of Margarita and promoter of the tourism sector, described what she experienced as “rough.” “The service was restored this weekend,” he confirmed this Monday to the VOA.

He was only able to continue working thanks to the electrical plant of the hotel where he works.

“At home, we did not buy food that needed refrigeration so that it would not be damaged and, at night, it was a challenge to be able to sleep in that heat,” he indicated.

Cristóbal, a chick producer from Nueva Esparta, also under another name, said he had lost “two years of work” due to power outages: several batches of his chicks died due to lack of ventilation.

“I have lost everything,” he said about his chicken breeding business, for which he even sold his car to buy feeders, waterers, fans and a shed.

The first days without light, 600 4 and a half week old chicks died. They all became progressively infarcted, he stated.

“The ones I kept for consumption got a bad smell” due to lack of refrigeration, he explained. “The heat on the island is infernal and, since they didn’t have ventilation, they died,” he protested.

His family, including his wife, two children, his grandmother and mother, and a nephew whom he pays for his studies, are hurt by the losses. “We are left without a bid to start again.”

They and their neighbors had a “fatal” last week, with 18-hour rationing, he explained. The service returned for only two hours and, immediately afterwards, another half-day blackout.

“It was a calamity.”

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